This is an interesting and funny experiment, but I believe it's success lies in the fact that the author lucked out and found someone who could actually help with his work for $8 an hour.
I didn't watch the videos, but from the text it sounds like the lady was more like a good coworker, certainly better than your average minimum wage slapper.
I'm work alongside someone for $8 an hour, depending how distractable they are. I have some tasks that don't require that much focus and it's nice to do socially.
I expect I'd get a spinoff effect of being more productive myself. Wouldn't want to be on Facebook when I'm trying to keep someone else off it.
"Social working" -- I always thought this was the most important takeaways from XP and agile methodologies, that the highest quality work gets done when we tell each other what we're going to do ahead of time (agile/scrum), and then collaborate in the most literal sense by sharing one screen (pair programming) to see that the work gets done in the best possible way. Granted there are surely lots of other takeaways, but those are two things I did take, and I only do one of them.
I think it's a neat and creative idea, but I wonder about its long-term effectiveness as they get to know one another better. It's easy to be embarrassed when making mistakes in front of someone you don't know at all, because there still exists that social awkwardness between the two. But get to know someone well enough and it's much easier to shrug off. Maybe he should just hire someone new every few weeks to keep things fresh?
It still irks me that people can tout off success as though it's guaranteed for small experiments such as this without even considering elements such as the Hawthorne effect - 'changed behaviour during the course of a study may be related to the special social situation and social treatment they received'
Can you elaborate on why it's idiotic? As much as computer programmers like to think they're precious snow flakes to whom productivity tips don't apply to, this sort of system works for fitness, sales and from PGs post, sculptors.
Because as a one-time experiment, the subject is likely to do well as the phenomena itself is new. As the experiment progresses into multiple days or weeks, the subject is likely to say, "What the fuck? Stop slapping me. You're fired, I want to browse reddit." In my opinion, anyways.
I think anyone willing to pay someone ~$300 a week will not simply snap at the person and fire them because they want to browse reddit. They understand the value.
There are a lot of assumptions in this statement worth examining:
1. A productivity system must work for a long time.
2. A conversation about productivity systems must exclude those that are in the "doesn't work" and "interesting new idea" stages.
3. Productivity systems and workflows are not personality (or personality type) dependent - what works for one person doesn't qualify as something worth investigating by those who identify with the "successful user".
I think #2 and #3 stand alone, but #1 is a bit more interesting:
There exist people for whom any productivity system will not work in the long run. There are several factors that can be involved in this:
* they are actually more productive when ramping up a system and early in using it - the thinking about the system to productivity inspires actual productivity. Once they internalize the rules and the ramp up, it stops working because they don't focus any more
* The sort of person who internally chafes at rules/structure may experience productivity at first with a new system, because (s)he as decided to comply with that system, but subconsciously starts to figure out ways to meet the rules of the productivity system without actually being productive. Some people just do this, whether they intend to or or not, it's just a thing.
* Novelty itself inspires them to do more
* Productivity inspires productivity - the act of setting up a productivity system is productive, therefor inspiring other productivity elsewhere. (similar to the first example but a bit different)
And so on.
Why not give such people another system or lifehack or workflow hack or whatever you label it, to chew on?
(ok I claimed I'd leave #3 alone, but experiments like this allow people see more things that work for someone a bit, and help give them ideas to tailor the system to themselves)
Now that's idiotic. There needs to be a conversation before it can be used by more than one persion, and it likely needs to be used by many people as the result of conversation (and blog posts) before there is enough anecdotal evidence to warrant a scientific study.
Not to mention the fact that if it works for someone, it is by definition effective for that person, and worth noting for that person.
What's with the influx of HN'ers demanding scientific proof before any matter is discussed? Same debate happened over whether meditation was helpful.
I don't think he's saying we should all hire some slappers. Rather, if we incorporate the right kind of social component to our workflow, we can improve productivity a lot. The slapping is an attention-getter for sure, but I think it's a creative way to make a point.
True, but when I work in a busy vibrant office, surrounded by interesting peers excited by their work, my productivity goes through the roof - I feel like a cheat spending time on Facebook or <gasp> HackerNews.
When working from home or in a dull share office...
The $0/hour is to redirect your most popular slack sites in (e.g. Facebook) using /etc/hosts. You can redirect them to localhost, or to something you personally find annoying. :P
It worked for me. My reddit habits turned into mouse scrolling looking at pictures, it was "fun" and required no effort on my part.
The first week I keept trying to access it and finding my 'default' vhost. Now I don't even miss it when I'm on my PC. I have Alien Blue on my iPad but there I can't just scroll and scroll, I read content I care about on the reddits I like and not /r/all!
This is incredibly true for me. I blocked time sink websites (like HN ironically) in /etc/hosts for about a day, and then I constantly went back and reverted my changes. Then, I wrote a daemon that constantly checks the host file and puts the blocks back if I changed it. I tried making the installation and operation as obscure as possible and try to forget the metaphoric key. However, I eventually ended up spending a bunch of time to rediscover what I did, so I ended up disabling this script as well...
Just make it so, that's it's trivial to get around. (Like the /etc/hosts thing.) Then you instead of spending time thinking of how to get around, you will have to admit what you are doing.
Ignoring the moronic link bait about slapping, essentially what he did was apply pair programming to writing. It would make far more economic sense to do this as well, since the level of entry to get a person to pair with to write is far lower than for a programmer, so kudos.
It's been my experience that it is a lot easier to ask for a paper trail on craigslist from prospective sellers than it is on the street from some boiler-room type operation.
I like the idea in theory, but, if I hired someone to help me stay on task from craigslist they (probably) wouldn't undertand various programming tasks I was working on... so most likely they would not be able to stay on task at keeping me to stay on task ;)
It's hard to make precise, depending on a whole host of factors. It's clearly positive, however, as our burn rate on just her salary is far lower than it would cost me alone to maintain my lifestyle.
I don't know if you're a rich guy planning to marry down in the social hierarchy, living in a culture where where women don't work or just a misogynist but this is generally false in the west. Dual incomes with a single household is very economical compared to life as a single.
See eg. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dinks.asp "A household in which there are two incomes and no children (either both partners are working or one has two incomes). DINKS are often the target of marketing efforts for luxury items such as expensive cars and vacations."
Interesting, is this legal? At first I thought it wouldn't be, but then I realized that an investor relationship might not be one of the relationships protected by workplace sexual harassment laws.
Interesting. I'm curious about the legality of a company putting all or most prospective employees through a 'trial run' as an independent contractor before hiring them. Ignoring feasibility of attracting talent in such a system, are there laws in place to prevent such practices being used to circumvent anti discrimination laws?
@fourk I imagine that if a "trial run" candidate who outperformed his/her peers was denied employment, he or she would have grounds to sue for discrimination.
The most important thing I got out of this article isn't the productivity 'hack' but the fact that there's a program called RescueTime that lets you find out exactly how much time you spent on your computer doing what.. o_O I didn't know about that!
I have long suspected that I have an HN addiction. Time to quantify it!
I just added a list of websites to the hosts file, but the thing is - I know how to unlock that stuff in a few seconds (and LeechBlock can be turned off even faster).
I wish I could lock websites between certain hours at the ISP level, and unlocking shouldn't be easy, and should take a few hours.
Surely that indicates not that they think "adult funsies" are important (though maybe they do) but just that they expect some people to be worried about the prospects of having their adult-funsies activity logged on someone else's server, and want to reassure them that it won't be. Seems reasonable to me.
I've been looking for something vaguely like this -- i.e., accountability -- for my own work. I'd rather work on my own projects, solo, but the one thing that is missing from a more formal work environment (or even a startup that's just "2 people with laptops in a cafe", which I did for a while) is accountability.
I've suggested to my friends with startups that they should host "hack nights" where random people can bring their laptop and work in a shared space for a while. I think it'd also be a good recruiting tool for the company. They've already got a cool office, so why not invite people there to see for themselves, plus become known as that place where people go to hack on interesting things?
I think this is one thing that academia really got right (having worked there for a few years once): put a bunch of smart people together in close proximity, each working on their own thing, but loosely sharing with each other. Big companies, small companies, startups, coworking spaces, and cafés all get one piece of this but miss a crucial piece.
I'm just curious what you think coworking spaces get wrong? Having looked at a few (but I must note, never worked in one!) it sounds like they come the closest to what you describe.
I started writing a response but it started getting rather long, so it really deserves to be its own blog post. In the meantime, I'll pick just one thing that seems most relevant:
There's a kind of implicit tactical (minute-to-minute) accountability in coworking, because you're all there to work, but not any larger strategic accountability. I don't think anybody would hold your feet to the fire if you didn't produce anything for a week, or month.
Guilt (or at least empathy) can work in a similar way. My girlfriend is in grad school right now and always has a ton of work to do at night. I feel bad spending my nights goofing off or watching TV while she's hard at work, so I've been really good at getting real work done on my projects while she's doing homework.
one of my friends did something very similar [without the slapping] and had the same results. he is a high stakes poker player and paid somebody just to sit next to him and make sure he didnt surf the web, chat on aim, etc while playing poker. it let the "attendant" watch a skilled player at work, and it kept the player focused and earning more money.
is it best to will yourself to not get distracted? of course, but we all know thats easier said than done and for people with high hourly rates, it is often going to be worth it to just pay somebody to help ensure compliance.
The social element works. I've experienced big productivity gains by having someone I connected with on Hacker News call me every night at 10:00pm and ask me 4 Yes/No questions that I wrote. The pressure to not say no provides extra fuel to stay on track and get more done.
However, don't put a popup in my face while I'm reading your stuff to join whatever site it is. And don't bloat the side of the page with "share" stuff. If I like the content, I will share and/or signup, or at least bug me once I reach the end but not while I'm in the middle of reading and on a mobile device this is even worse. /rant
The problem with these kind of articles is that they focus only on the "one-time off" and then never talk about how sustainable the productivity increase really is. If this is to be a social experiment, it needs to be done on a longer term like a month or something. Anything less that is just anecdotal.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 191 ms ] threadI didn't watch the videos, but from the text it sounds like the lady was more like a good coworker, certainly better than your average minimum wage slapper.
I expect I'd get a spinoff effect of being more productive myself. Wouldn't want to be on Facebook when I'm trying to keep someone else off it.
I actually think when you know the person watching you and value her/his opinion it works better.
As a blog post that serves as link-bait, it is GENIUS.
...which is to say, I think it excelled at the REAL goal. ;-)
1. A productivity system must work for a long time.
2. A conversation about productivity systems must exclude those that are in the "doesn't work" and "interesting new idea" stages.
3. Productivity systems and workflows are not personality (or personality type) dependent - what works for one person doesn't qualify as something worth investigating by those who identify with the "successful user".
I think #2 and #3 stand alone, but #1 is a bit more interesting:
There exist people for whom any productivity system will not work in the long run. There are several factors that can be involved in this:
* they are actually more productive when ramping up a system and early in using it - the thinking about the system to productivity inspires actual productivity. Once they internalize the rules and the ramp up, it stops working because they don't focus any more
* The sort of person who internally chafes at rules/structure may experience productivity at first with a new system, because (s)he as decided to comply with that system, but subconsciously starts to figure out ways to meet the rules of the productivity system without actually being productive. Some people just do this, whether they intend to or or not, it's just a thing.
* Novelty itself inspires them to do more
* Productivity inspires productivity - the act of setting up a productivity system is productive, therefor inspiring other productivity elsewhere. (similar to the first example but a bit different)
And so on.
Why not give such people another system or lifehack or workflow hack or whatever you label it, to chew on?
(ok I claimed I'd leave #3 alone, but experiments like this allow people see more things that work for someone a bit, and help give them ideas to tailor the system to themselves)
Not to mention the fact that if it works for someone, it is by definition effective for that person, and worth noting for that person.
What's with the influx of HN'ers demanding scientific proof before any matter is discussed? Same debate happened over whether meditation was helpful.
He should write a post after 6 months of doing this.
When working from home or in a dull share office...
The first week I keept trying to access it and finding my 'default' vhost. Now I don't even miss it when I'm on my PC. I have Alien Blue on my iPad but there I can't just scroll and scroll, I read content I care about on the reddits I like and not /r/all!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock/
Ironic, since Craigslist is infested with stolen bike listings :(.
http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/slapp...
w-hacker
See eg. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dinks.asp "A household in which there are two incomes and no children (either both partners are working or one has two incomes). DINKS are often the target of marketing efforts for luxury items such as expensive cars and vacations."
Edit: Prior probabilities yada yada.
Don't know if its legal but it would certainly be an asshole move.
I have long suspected that I have an HN addiction. Time to quantify it!
For others: https://www.rescuetime.com/
EDIT: Haha, while setting it up I found that the rescuetime folks think that adult funsies are quite important :P
Ignore adult content. Data for sites we recognize as adult-themed will be rejected at our servers and no time will be logged.
I wish I could lock websites between certain hours at the ISP level, and unlocking shouldn't be easy, and should take a few hours.
http://www.manictime.com/
I can't recall what I didn't like about RescueTime, but the free version of ManicTime gives me a very good breakdown for my purposes.
FWIW, I spend on average close to 2 hours a day (of 10 hours in my office) browsing the web, and only 2/3 hours of real productivity (I hate my job).
I've suggested to my friends with startups that they should host "hack nights" where random people can bring their laptop and work in a shared space for a while. I think it'd also be a good recruiting tool for the company. They've already got a cool office, so why not invite people there to see for themselves, plus become known as that place where people go to hack on interesting things?
I think this is one thing that academia really got right (having worked there for a few years once): put a bunch of smart people together in close proximity, each working on their own thing, but loosely sharing with each other. Big companies, small companies, startups, coworking spaces, and cafés all get one piece of this but miss a crucial piece.
Maybe I need to start a meta-startup.
There's a kind of implicit tactical (minute-to-minute) accountability in coworking, because you're all there to work, but not any larger strategic accountability. I don't think anybody would hold your feet to the fire if you didn't produce anything for a week, or month.
-- I imagine.
is it best to will yourself to not get distracted? of course, but we all know thats easier said than done and for people with high hourly rates, it is often going to be worth it to just pay somebody to help ensure compliance.
However, don't put a popup in my face while I'm reading your stuff to join whatever site it is. And don't bloat the side of the page with "share" stuff. If I like the content, I will share and/or signup, or at least bug me once I reach the end but not while I'm in the middle of reading and on a mobile device this is even worse. /rant
Start a slapping startup!